I should know better...
I should have figured it out by now, but I guess I'm not quite that smart. I should not talk politics at work.... it is simply a bad, bad idea.
I kinda ticked off one of my superiors on Saturday night. I was rambling about how there is no such thing as a "right to education." My argument was simply, "if I'm not going to college, but I'm a taxpayer, I'm technically paying for somebody else to go to college. That is wrong, plain and simple."
The response to this was pretty harsh, I think. First, a question: "do you get the HOPE scholarship?" Upon answering yes, I was labeled as hypocritical and stupid and my opponent promptly walked away. (I'm taking great care not to reveal any sort of useful information about who I was having this conversation with, so apologies if my resulting sentences are unclear and wordy.)
I never got a chance to offer a refutation of these criticisms, so I will do so here.
First of all, as far as I am aware, the HOPE scholarship is primarly funded by a state lottery system. It is no secret that lottery money goes towards HOPE, and nobody in the state is forced to buy lottery tickets. (I actually did mention this, and the response was: "well nobody is forcing you to live in the United States, so you can just move if you don't like it." More on that later.)
The key to good law and good government is that, in any action, contract, event, whatever, all parties involved should consent to it. So, if I sell you something, and we both consent, it should be legal. If I steal something from you, it's simply a sale without your consent, and therefore illegal. I'm not saying this *is* the basis of our law, just that it *should* be. So, since only those people who give their consent to the whole lottery system buy lottery tickets, there is no reason why I shouldn't accept money from HOPE.
A problem comes into play: is any federal or state tax money from sources other than lottery tickets used to fund HOPE or the HOPE administrative workers? If so, such funding must be immediately cut so that only lottery money is used. I have no evidence that this is the case, so I don't worry about it. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.
The next thing I'd like to comment on is the idea that if you have some sort of disagreement with the way that our government operates, you should shut up and deal with it or move out of the country. Why would anybody say this? Did the first (European descended) inhabitants of our country not flee Europe so they could live how they wished to? Were our founding fathers not paranoid that our government would some day rule in a fashion not equitable to all citizens? Is the purpose of our constitution not to protect individuals from being deprived their life, liberty, and property (without just compensation)? The sad fact is that money (the physical federal reserve notes) remains property of the U.S. Treasury, so it is not our property to be deprived of, but the source of money is (at least in my case) labor, and I am being deprived the profits of my labor without my consent. Is this not wrong? I shouldn't have to *leave* America because I want to live the way I choose, I should want to come to America to live the way I choose. It is madness that so many in our country have taken this "live with it or leave it" approach to government.
As a side note, there is a way to measure inequity in wealth - the Gini coefficient. During the Clinton years, the Gini coefficient rose, meaning that the rich got richer and the poor got poorer. Don't count on the Democrats to help the poor. I should also note that in the United States, from 1947 until the late 1960s, it stayed pretty much constant. I don't have data from before 1947 at the moment. In the late sixties and early seventies, wealth inequality started to rise and has been rising ever since. It is curious to note that this process started alongside Lyndon Johnson's "Great Society." In the next couple weeks, I will hopefully create a chart showing jumps in wealth inequity every time a new socialist measure passes in Washington.
Basically, I'm going to try to prove that in our country, socialism has the opposite effect that is intended. It doesn't equalize the classes, it makes the class divide worse. I'm not going to attempt to get into whether classes are inherently good or bad... yet.... but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.
I kinda ticked off one of my superiors on Saturday night. I was rambling about how there is no such thing as a "right to education." My argument was simply, "if I'm not going to college, but I'm a taxpayer, I'm technically paying for somebody else to go to college. That is wrong, plain and simple."
The response to this was pretty harsh, I think. First, a question: "do you get the HOPE scholarship?" Upon answering yes, I was labeled as hypocritical and stupid and my opponent promptly walked away. (I'm taking great care not to reveal any sort of useful information about who I was having this conversation with, so apologies if my resulting sentences are unclear and wordy.)
I never got a chance to offer a refutation of these criticisms, so I will do so here.
First of all, as far as I am aware, the HOPE scholarship is primarly funded by a state lottery system. It is no secret that lottery money goes towards HOPE, and nobody in the state is forced to buy lottery tickets. (I actually did mention this, and the response was: "well nobody is forcing you to live in the United States, so you can just move if you don't like it." More on that later.)
The key to good law and good government is that, in any action, contract, event, whatever, all parties involved should consent to it. So, if I sell you something, and we both consent, it should be legal. If I steal something from you, it's simply a sale without your consent, and therefore illegal. I'm not saying this *is* the basis of our law, just that it *should* be. So, since only those people who give their consent to the whole lottery system buy lottery tickets, there is no reason why I shouldn't accept money from HOPE.
A problem comes into play: is any federal or state tax money from sources other than lottery tickets used to fund HOPE or the HOPE administrative workers? If so, such funding must be immediately cut so that only lottery money is used. I have no evidence that this is the case, so I don't worry about it. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.
The next thing I'd like to comment on is the idea that if you have some sort of disagreement with the way that our government operates, you should shut up and deal with it or move out of the country. Why would anybody say this? Did the first (European descended) inhabitants of our country not flee Europe so they could live how they wished to? Were our founding fathers not paranoid that our government would some day rule in a fashion not equitable to all citizens? Is the purpose of our constitution not to protect individuals from being deprived their life, liberty, and property (without just compensation)? The sad fact is that money (the physical federal reserve notes) remains property of the U.S. Treasury, so it is not our property to be deprived of, but the source of money is (at least in my case) labor, and I am being deprived the profits of my labor without my consent. Is this not wrong? I shouldn't have to *leave* America because I want to live the way I choose, I should want to come to America to live the way I choose. It is madness that so many in our country have taken this "live with it or leave it" approach to government.
As a side note, there is a way to measure inequity in wealth - the Gini coefficient. During the Clinton years, the Gini coefficient rose, meaning that the rich got richer and the poor got poorer. Don't count on the Democrats to help the poor. I should also note that in the United States, from 1947 until the late 1960s, it stayed pretty much constant. I don't have data from before 1947 at the moment. In the late sixties and early seventies, wealth inequality started to rise and has been rising ever since. It is curious to note that this process started alongside Lyndon Johnson's "Great Society." In the next couple weeks, I will hopefully create a chart showing jumps in wealth inequity every time a new socialist measure passes in Washington.
Basically, I'm going to try to prove that in our country, socialism has the opposite effect that is intended. It doesn't equalize the classes, it makes the class divide worse. I'm not going to attempt to get into whether classes are inherently good or bad... yet.... but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.
posted by timmyform at 1:18 PM
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